Below is the OCR text representation for this newspapers page.

SITUATION IN GERMANY + riT^HE Jewish wage earners in Germany have I been confined mostly to Jewish business enterprises; very few Jewish workers were engaged in German enterprises even under the previous Liberal regime. On the other hand, most Gcrman-Jewish enterprises, such as the department stores, chain stores, newspapers and publishing of fices, small workshops and trading establishments, readily engaged Jewish labor. Official statistics issued by the Jewish community of Berlin in 1932 show that approximately 75,000 Jewish bread winners in Germany were so employed, and they eked out a poor but honest living by their labor. With the advent of the Nazi regime the ordeal of these people has begun. The word has gone out that these workers must all be “cleaned" out of German business and replaced by the new Aryan aristocracy. The first to be dismissed were the comparatively few Jewish workers employed in municipal or state positions; then followed the slightly bigger percentage of those who worked in German enterprises, and lastly the big drive has begun for the dismissal of the Jewish workers fioin the Jewish enterprises as well. The procedure is for the Nazi “cell," which operates in every business enterprise now, to de mand the dismissal of the Jews on the general ground of “cleansing” German industry and busi ness and make it “judenrein." No other reason is advanced. Even the blanket-accusation of “Communism” and “Marxism” is not deemed to be necessary. The mere fact of a person having been born a Jew is sufficient reason for his being deprived of the privilege of work and making a living. The Central Government seldom inter feres officially in these acts, but Jewish employers know very well that it is- not healthy for their business to oppose the wishes even of the un official Nazi “cells,” and to their shame it must be said, that they largely yield to this cruel demand without resistance. Only one honorable exception is known to the general rule of abject cringing on the part of this Jewish big business before this particular manifestation of Nazi force. This is the case of Tietz and Co., the famous German department store owners who courageously in formed their Nazi “cells" that they would close down their business entirely rather than dismiss their several thousand Jewish shop girls and clerks. Most other Jewish employers were only too ready to sacrifice their Jewish employees for their busi ness and some, like the Mosse Verlag—the pub lishers of the “Berliner Tageblatt"—were so eager to ingratiate themselves with the new masters that they were more sweeping in thtir dismissals than even the Nazis had demanded. And thus one of the most pitiful tragedies of present-day Germany has begun, and is still going on. Men and women by the thousands are being dismissed from their positions which some of them have held for decades. Tens of thousands of poor family breadwinners are being deprived of the only privilege to work which they will ever get in Germany and of the only opportunity for earn ing an honest living. A new army of unemployed The Effect of the Nazi Economic Program By WILLIAM ZUKERMAN (Noted Foreign Correspondent) William Zukerman, distinguished collabora tor to The Southern Israelite, contributes this revealing article on the cold pogrom, carried out by the Nazis without interference front any civilized agency inside or outside of Germany. is springing up, an army not only without work, but also without hope of ever getting work no matter what prosperity comes to Germany again. For German firms seldom engaged Jewish workers in the past, and Jews will not dare to do so in the future. The dismissal, therefore, spells prac tical elimination from honest work forever. In most cases the people thus thrown out of employment are not even paid for the usual period of notice which is legally required in Germany. For in a recent test case of 115 Jewish employees of the “Berliner 'Tageblatt” who appealed against the arbitrary dismissal on the ground of race and religion, a Nazi Court of “Justice” in Berlin ruled that not only had the firm a right to dismiss the workers because they were Jews, but that it did not have to pay the usual legal compensation for dismissal. As yet there are enough employers in Germany whose sense of justice has not been Nazified, and the dismissed Jewish workers as a rule get several weeks’ compensation, and even more. There is on record the case of the Sheri Verlag (the pub lishing house of the Nationalist leader, Herr Hugenberg), which paid its dismissed Jewish em ployees a full year’s salary. In some firms the dis missal proceeds slowly, and is spread over a period of weeks; in others, the Jews are discharged whole sale and all at once, as recently in the case of the “E.P.A.” chain stores. Some do it curtly, bru tally; others politely, with regrets; some even with tears; (there were even cases of banquets having been given to the dismissed Jewish em ployees). But the result is everywhere the same. Thousands of Jews are left without work and bread; thousands of men are thrown upon charity; thousands of women thrown onto the streets, and all are doomed to swift and sure starvation. For the German dole lasts only for twelve weeks; Jewish charity cannot cope with an unemployed army of such dimensions, and the reserves of these people, like those of most laboring humanity, are too low to enable them to keep the wolf from the door even for a short time. Unlike the persecuted Jewish business and professional man, the Jewish I workers cannot retire until the storm is o\er, nor I can they leave the country. They have nnwhrrrl to go and nothing to do except to swarm around! the dole and relief offices for several weeks, and | then to go down swiftly and surely into the abwl of beggary and starvation. There is yet one other aspect of the tragedy I one w’hich is not generally knowm in the non I Jewdsh world, but W’hich is of utmost important I to Jews. 'The centuries of Jewish discrimination and I Ghetto life have led to the creation of a one-sided I abnormal Jewish economic life in many coun-J tries, including Germany. Having been forbidden I for centuries to engage in agriculture, industry. I and other forms of productive labor, Jews ha\el been forced to engage primarily in finance and I trading. As often happens, the disability has be-1 come a habit; the habit, a special talent, and thi' I talent has led to tragic consequences for the Jews. I The fact of the large preponderance of the Jew- in business and trading has been used by anti- Semitism throughout the ages as proof of Jewish non-productivity and has served as the only plausi ble basis of all anti-Jew’ish movements. Anti Semitic propaganda has revolved almost wholly around the exploitation character of Jewish oc cupations ; the most vicious anti-Jewish pogrom' were led to the cry of Jewish economic parasitism. The emancipation of the Jews from the religious and political disabilities of the Ghetto which be gan in the nineteenth century was almost from the beginning accompanied by a parallel movement within Jew’ry itself for a reconstruction of its economic life by changing Jewish occupation' from business and finance to agriculture and laboi- 'This great urge for economic productivization is probably, the most powerful manifestation ot modern Jewish life, and has contributed more tow’ard the real, inner emancipation of the Jews than all decrees of Parliaments and acts of Revo lutions. Every great Jewish social movement ot the last fifty years, from Zionism to Jewish Colo nization in Sovietv Russia, has striven prim aril' toward this economic reconstruction. Every con scious and unconscious effort of modern Jewry in every country in the w’orld has tended in the same direction. The rise and the growth of a Jewish wage earning class in Germany has been one ot the most hopeful signs of this movement for economic regeneration. Even the propensity ot German Jew’s for the professions, which i> the chief argument of the Nazis for their present anti- Jewish campaign, is also an expression of the same general Jewish urge. It is but another manifes tation of the flight of the modern Jew’ from busi ness and finance to more useful and productive occupations. And it is to this painful struggle of a r *°f ' to free itself from disabilities which centuri s ot persecution have put upon it that the Nazis have chosen, of all else in Jewish life, to deal a death blow. The extermination of Jew’ish Lab< r ’ r Germany is more than (Please turn to pag< H [4] * THE SOUTHERN ISRAE ITS